Proper Photoshop Print Resolution?

I've heard that I should set photoshop to 300dpi for my Canon S9000 printer. All is well & good, however when I do a print preview, it seems to think that my image will be severly cropped to fit on the page & I need to do a "scale to fit media" to have the entire 6MP image printed out at 8x10.

My question: Is photoshop downsampling my image before it sends it to the printer? What can I do to get photoshop to think it can print out the 6MP image on a high resolution printer without having to "scale to fit media"? I've tried playing with the screen and printer resolution preferences to no avail.

Thanks for any help! Sorry if this is a stupid question - I'm a PS newbee.

Cheers, Rob

Open the image size dialogue box, turn off the sampling at the bottom, and set the proper image size in inches. If the image does not fit exactly, you will have to set one of the dimensions to the size you want where the other is somewhat bigger than what you want. Later you will crop the image to get the proper dimensions. After setting the new size, turn the sampling box back on, put 300 into the pixels per inch box, and execute the dialogue box. (If you are upsampling and the increase in ppi is less than a factor of two, the bicubic interpolation in Photoshop will do well. If more than a factor of two, then something like Genuine Fractals will do a better job. If you are downsampling, you have nothing to worry about.) Crop the dimension that is too long to the correct size. You will now have an image to print with the correct size at 300 ppi.

rob in ca said:

I've heard that I should set photoshop to 300dpi for my Canon S9000
printer. All is well & good, however when I do a print preview, it
seems to think that my image will be severly cropped to fit on the
page & I need to do a "scale to fit media" to have the entire 6MP
image printed out at 8x10.

My question: Is photoshop downsampling my image before it sends it
to the printer? What can I do to get photoshop to think it can
print out the 6MP image on a high resolution printer without having
to "scale to fit media"? I've tried playing with the screen and
printer resolution preferences to no avail.

Thanks for any help! Sorry if this is a stupid question - I'm a PS
newbee.

Cheers, Rob

Click to expand...

Excellent, thanks for the help!

For my previous prints where I did not do this, did they get downsampled before being sent to the printer driver? (thats where I had to tell the print with preview fit to page, otherwise it would have only printed 10% of the image)

Thanks again, Rob

Leon Wittwer said:

rob in ca said:

I've heard that I should set photoshop to 300dpi for my Canon S9000
printer. All is well & good, however when I do a print preview, it
seems to think that my image will be severly cropped to fit on the
page & I need to do a "scale to fit media" to have the entire 6MP
image printed out at 8x10.

My question: Is photoshop downsampling my image before it sends it
to the printer? What can I do to get photoshop to think it can
print out the 6MP image on a high resolution printer without having
to "scale to fit media"? I've tried playing with the screen and
printer resolution preferences to no avail.

Thanks for any help! Sorry if this is a stupid question - I'm a PS
newbee.

Cheers, Rob

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Rob,

Go to http://www.ddisoftware.com and purchase Qimage Pro. It's good to know how to do all of this in PS, but Qimage Pro will take care of all of the guess work for you. It will optimize the print output for your particular print driver. There is excellent support for Qimage here in this forum. It really is an excellent program. You can then use Photoshop to edit the image and print using Qimage Pro.

Just a suggestion for a newbie...

DigiMon

rob in ca said:

I've heard that I should set photoshop to 300dpi for my Canon S9000
printer. All is well & good, however when I do a print preview, it
seems to think that my image will be severly cropped to fit on the
page & I need to do a "scale to fit media" to have the entire 6MP
image printed out at 8x10.

My question: Is photoshop downsampling my image before it sends it
to the printer? What can I do to get photoshop to think it can
print out the 6MP image on a high resolution printer without having
to "scale to fit media"? I've tried playing with the screen and
printer resolution preferences to no avail.

Thanks for any help! Sorry if this is a stupid question - I'm a PS
newbee.

Cheers, Rob

Click to expand...

I took a picture of the moon tonight with D60/70-200F4L/+1.4x IL converter. The moon was very small in the frame.

EXIF info: (after 16-bit Tiff Linear Conversion)
File size: 36.0MB
Shutter speed: 1/25 sec
Aperture: 8.0
ISO: 100
Focal length: 280.0 mm
I then used the Fred Miranda Linear profile conversion.

The file loaded in PS 7 is:
17.067 inches wide by 11.378 inches high.

I cropped the image to just the moon which was 2 x 2.6 inches!

Then used curves to slightly lighten and applied USM.

The first image I changed the resolution from default 180 to 266. Then pulled the file into Qimage and used Lanczos interpolation to take it to 8.5x11. Printed and you can actually see the pixels around the edge of the moon.

The second image I did all the same above except I didn't touch the resolution, I left it at 180. Did the same in Qimage and printed it and you can see a definate smoothness to the picture which looks fantastic.

Qimage is the best $35.00 I've spent in a long time....BUT honestly, the interface is not intuitive and takes a little time to get around in.....

DigiMon said:

Go to http://www.ddisoftware.com and purchase Qimage Pro. It's
good to know how to do all of this in PS, but Qimage Pro will take
care of all of the guess work for you. It will optimize the print
output for your particular print driver. There is excellent
support for Qimage here in this forum. It really is an excellent
program. You can then use Photoshop to edit the image and print
using Qimage Pro.

Just a suggestion for a newbie...

DigiMon

rob in ca said:

I've heard that I should set photoshop to 300dpi for my Canon S9000
printer. All is well & good, however when I do a print preview, it
seems to think that my image will be severly cropped to fit on the
page & I need to do a "scale to fit media" to have the entire 6MP
image printed out at 8x10.

My question: Is photoshop downsampling my image before it sends it
to the printer? What can I do to get photoshop to think it can
print out the 6MP image on a high resolution printer without having
to "scale to fit media"? I've tried playing with the screen and
printer resolution preferences to no avail.

Thanks for any help! Sorry if this is a stupid question - I'm a PS
newbee.

Cheers, Rob

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

rob in ca said:

I've heard that I should set photoshop to 300dpi for my Canon S9000
printer. All is well & good, however when I do a print preview, it
seems to think that my image will be severly cropped to fit on the
page & I need to do a "scale to fit media" to have the entire 6MP
image printed out at 8x10.

Click to expand...

Hi,

dpi discussions for inkjets can provoke a lot debate but 300 is definitely OTT......a 10" x 8" print would need a file size of 21.6MB. 200dpi is more reasonable, which is my resolution setting for printing on a S9000. If your image is from a 6MP camera then you won't need to interpolate interpolate the file at all for an A3 print:- but if you want to resize and resample at the same time then select the crop tool in PS, specify your final print dimension in the Options boxes set the DPI dialogue box to 200 and crop the image.

Interpolation is double edged sword; it can improve a pictures edges quality and allow more precise sharpening and other fx but it can't invent extra detail.
You might find a trip to http://www.dabbles.co.uk useful for more info.

Cheers, Eb.

PaulS95190 said:

Qimage is the best $35.00 I've spent in a long time....BUT
honestly, the interface is not intuitive and takes a little time to
get around in.....

Click to expand...

As a newbie to Qimage this was my experience. For others in the same situation I can recommend opening the help file that comes with Qimage and then reading/printing out the first three sections:

• Overview
• Getting Familiar with Qimage Pro
• Learn by Example

Although I have only just browsed them yet, it seems that they will help me understand the myriad of strangely looking buttons and functions and help me use Qimage..

--
Regards
Kenneth Darling Soerensen
Portfolio at http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=255231

Thanks for all the great info! Figuring out lcanzos interpolation for 13x19 prints is on my list of things to learn how to do. QImage is supposed to make it really simple, although I've heard there are some free tools to do it too.

I'm new to digital photography & having a blast! This is lots of fun.

Cheers, Rob